A visit to the local market in Kangra, Himachal Pradesh, and a chance encounter with a dark-skinned girl who wanted to buy a fairness cream, but couldn’t due to its high pricing, was the reason Congress MP Viplove Thakur decided to take on these companies in parliamentary battlefield.
“One day, while strolling in a market in Kangra, I heard a woman asking for Fair & Lovely at a shop. However, when she was told the price of the product, she began to bargain with the shopkeeper. But the shopkeeper refused to lower the price. As the woman did not have the adequate amount she had to leave the shop without it. The grief on her face while leaving her much-desired fairness cream made me very sad,” Ms Thakur said.
The event moved her so much that the Congress MP decided to raise the issue of advertisements of these self-proclaimed fairness creams in the Rajya Sabha. In fact, after the support that Ms Thakur received, raising the issue during the Zero Hour in the Rajya Sabha, she has now decided to bring in a private members bill seeking a control on advertisements of these self-proclaimed fairness creams.
“The basic idea of these advertisements is to create a complex in the minds of women. These are made in such a way that they demean those with a darker skin colour. I have also raised questions about whether these products were actually tested before being released in the market,” she added.
“The companies are free to have their products, but the way they sell it, spreading inferiority complex among women, is not advisable,” the Congress MP stated. When pointed that such products were also now available for men, she added that though this was a new phenomenon, the primary market of these products would remain to be women.
She emphasised that advertisement regulators should have powers to look at such demeaning advertisements and put a stop to it.
Taking on the fairness cream companies in the Rajya Sabha, the Congress MP had stated, “They develop inferiority complex among women who don’t have fair skin. Is this what our culture teaches us Girls feel that they are not getting married because of their skin colour. Such assurances pain women from inside. The government should do something on such issues.”
